Fatal Error

by Michael Ridpath

  As the sun set red over the hills towards Nice, lighting up the calm sea in a blaze of gold, we climbed some steps to a terrace above the pool for dinner. A goat’s cheese salad and fish cooked in a delectable sauce, washed down with the best white wine I had ever tasted, it overwhelmed my senses. I was intensely conscious of the presence of Dominique beside me, so conscious I could barely turn my head towards her for fear of staring.

  Eventually, she spoke to my shoulder. ‘You are very quiet this evening.’

  ‘Am I? I’m sorry.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, turning my head reluctantly towards her. ‘This is all so … I don’t know, lovely.’

  For the first time I was able to look at her properly. She had an angular face and I noticed lines around the side of her mouth. She was probably in her late thirties. But still a stunner. Definitely a stunner. Although the sun had almost disappeared, she continued to wear sunglasses, so I had no idea what her eyes looked like. But her full lips were smiling. The body I had first stared at was now safely hidden under a yellow wrap.

  ‘Is that book yours?’ She nodded towards my beaten-up copy of War and Peace, which I had inappropriately brought with me down to the pool.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Boring.’

  ‘It’s not that bad, once you get into it,’ I said.

  ‘Boff. I thought it was boring. I prefer Anna Karenina, don’t you? Now there is a woman I can spend a thousand pages with.’

  ‘I haven’t read it,’ I said, surprised.

  ‘Oh, but you must.’ She laughed, a hoarse, throaty laugh. ‘You look shocked. Why shouldn’t I read Anna Karenina?’

  ‘Er, I don’t know.’

  ‘You thought I was just a dumb model?’

  Yes, I thought. ‘No,’ I said.

  She laughed again. ‘Yes you did. Well, I studied philosophy at the University of Avignon. The modelling was supposed to be a, how do you call it … sideline. But then my studies became the sideline.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said, without thinking.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Er … I don’t know,’ I stammered, fearing I had been rude.

  She laughed. ‘I could at this moment be in an insurance office or something, putting little bits of paper into files. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But don’t you regret it a little bit?’

  ‘Sometimes. Not often. I have had some fun. A lot of fun. Do you have fun, David?’

  ‘Well, um, I suppose so.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  I gulped at the wine, and then came to my senses. ‘You’re winding me up, aren’t you?’

  She laughed. ‘I am. I love to corrupt the Englishmen. Unfortunately, when I had found Tony he had been corrupted already. It seems as if his son follows in his father’s footsteps.’

  At the other end of the table Mel’s coolness was visibly melting as it was exposed to the combined charm of the father-and-son team, and Ingrid was smiling broadly, her eyes shining.

  ‘He does have quite a reputation at school. I’d say he’s a natural.’

  ‘I can see he is. Abdulatif certainly seemed to appreciate him.’

  ‘Is Abdulatif the gardener?’

  ‘Yes. Delicious, isn’t he? I love the way he walks around without his shirt.’

  ‘But he likes men?’

  ‘I think Abdulatif likes anything beautiful.’

  I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

  ‘And you?’ she said. ‘Are you a natural with the women?’

  ‘I thought you’d stopped winding me up?’

  ‘That is just. But you and Guy, you seem very different.’

  ‘We are. We share a room at school, so I suppose we know each other pretty well. I was only the second choice to come out here, though.’

  ‘Yes. Tony said that Guy was bringing Helmut Schollenberger’s son with him.’

  ‘That’s right. Torsten.’

  She shuddered. ‘I detest that man. And before you ask, I have appeared in his magazines. Wearing less than perhaps I should. After my first marriage they discovered some old pictures.’ She laughed. ‘Actually, I didn’t mind. But Henri? Ooh!’

  ‘Who’s Henri?’

  ‘He’s a politician. And he’s so boring. I fell in love with his eyes. He had bedroom eyes, or he had them until we got married. Then they changed.’

  ‘So you got rid of him?’

  She shrugged. ‘We got rid of each other.’

  ‘And you met Tony?’

  ‘I met Tony.’ She smiled a slow smile. Not a smile of pleasure, more a smile of sadness, even pain, I thought.

  ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘Aha. That, I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The divorce. Guy’s mother would love to know.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’

  She laughed. ‘But of course you did.’

  Just then Owen, who had said nothing to anyone all evening, pushed his plate to one side, stood up, and made his way inside the house.

  ‘Owen! Are you sure you don’t want to stay?’ his father called after him.

  Owen paused and turned. ‘No,’ he said without a smile.

  ‘All right. Well, good night, then.’

  Owen grunted and turned away.

  ‘Good night, chéri,’ called Dominique to the back of Owen’s hulking shoulders. Owen didn’t break his stride to acknowledge her.

  ‘He is strange, that one,’ said Dominique. ‘He has been here for two days and has said scarcely a word. He talks to me like I do not exist. Tony tries to speak to him, but he never says more than two words back. I think Tony has given up.’

  ‘They haven’t seen much of their father, have they, Guy and Owen?’

  ‘No,’ said Dominique. ‘Tony’s life does not mix with the kids. And Robyn, their mother, hates them to see him. She would not even let them come to our wedding. I had never met Guy until just now. But I think Tony was feeling guilty, so he persuaded Robyn to let them come here for a couple of weeks. Also, Guy is older. I suspect Tony and he have more in common these days.’

  The servant cleared our plates, and Dominique poured another glass of wine. ‘Mon Dieu, my husband is enjoying himself, isn’t he?’ Mel and Ingrid were laughing uncontrollably at something he had just said. So too was Guy for that matter. Tony put his hand on Mel’s arm to steady her, and left it there. She didn’t draw away. Guy didn’t seem to notice.

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘To have two beautiful young girls hanging on your every word. What more can a forty-six-year-old man want, eh, David?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said neutrally.

  ‘Huh.’ She tossed back her hair. ‘Miguel! Another bottle of wine!’

  Eventually the night came to an end. I was pretty drunk. So was everyone else, with the possible exception of Ingrid. Guy and I lurched our way to the guest cottage, about twenty yards from the main house.

  As I sat on my bed, the room spun. I concentrated on trying to force the window to stay in one place. Miraculously, I succeeded.

  ‘I think I’m going to get lucky this week,’ said Guy, as he collapsed on his bed.

  ‘With the gardener? By the way, I heard he’s called Abdulatif.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha. No, with Mel, you cretin. Although I quite like Ingrid. I bet she’s hot in bed. Maybe with both of them.’

  ‘Guy!’

  ‘OK. With Mel. You know, I’m pretty sure she’s still a virgin.’

  ‘That’s what they say at school.’

  ‘Yeah, but how would they know? You never really know until, well, you find out.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘But she’s up for it. She’s definitely up for it.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said without conviction.

  Why was it always people like Guy who got the girls? Why didn’t girls like Mel and Ingrid laugh at my jokes? Because I
didn’t have the confidence to make them, was one answer. Because I wasn’t good looking, was another. There were no doubt many others. Mel, Guy, Tony, Dominique, Ingrid, even the gardener Abdulatif. All beautiful people. All using their natural gifts in an intricate dance of attraction and temptation, in which the steps consisted of a witty comment, a well-timed glance, a touch. On nights like that night, when sex hung in the air, I felt envious, frustrated and inadequate.

  I think I must have fallen asleep, but only for an hour or so. I awoke feeling tense, drunk and hung over all at the same time. I could hear regular breathing from Guy’s bed. My stomach didn’t feel good, and I needed a pee, but my limbs felt so heavy I wasn’t sure I had the strength to get out of bed.

  The pain in my bladder worsened until it overcame my feebleness, and I crawled out of bed and staggered through to the bathroom. After I had finished I splashed my face and took a long drink of water. I still felt sick. I thought I would step outside in the hope that the night air would do me good.

  It worked. A cool gentle breeze bathed my face. I was surrounded by the urgent communications of a thousand insects. I walked over to the marble railings and looked towards the black silhouette of Cap Ferrat against the shifting grey of the sea. I could make out the ruined watchtower in the gloom next to the lone olive tree, silently guarding the house as it had for centuries. The smell of salt and pine mingled in the air. I leaned over the railings and peered down to the small breakers below, and felt better.

  I’m not sure how long I stayed there, slumped against the railings. I may even have fallen asleep. But I slowly became aware of voices in the house behind me. Angry voices. I stood up and strained to listen. It was Tony and Dominique. They were speaking French and I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Until Dominique’s voice rang through the garden towards me. ‘Salaud! Une gosse! Tu as baisé une gosse!’ A door slammed and the garden returned to the sounds of the crickets and the wind in the trees and the waves.

  ‘Salaud! Une gosse! Tu as baisé une gosse!’ My addled brain scraped through my French vocabulary. It was all a bit colloquial for me. What the hell was a gosse? A goose, perhaps? Then I remembered baiser from a Molière play we had studied at school. Kiss. Tony had been kissing someone he shouldn’t have. And somehow I doubted it was a goose. Hm.

  I made my way back to my room and crawled into bed, wondering if what I thought had happened really had happened. Perhaps I had got completely the wrong end of the stick, like the time when I had confused the French word for vicar with that for virgin in a French dictation, with disastrous consequences. The words tumbled over and over in my increasingly disjointed mind until I lost consciousness.

  5

  April 1999, The City, London

  I had never been sure I could trust Guy in the seventeen years I had known him and I wasn’t sure I could trust him now. He was asking me to place my career, my savings, my whole future in his hands and, as so often in the past, he was tempting me.

  Guy was like that.

  When he had phoned me that afternoon, out of the blue, I had recognized the American-tinged public-school drawl immediately. He suggested we meet for a beer. It was seven years since I had decided I would be better off avoiding him. Seven years is a long time. Besides, I was bored and I was curious. So I agreed to meet him at the Dickens Inn in St Katherine’s Dock.

  I arrived early; I was eager to escape the office and the walk from Gracechurch Street had taken less time than I had anticipated. I ordered a pint of bitter at the bar and pushed through the heaving mass of bankers, commodity traders and the odd tourist to the door. The evening sun glanced off the smooth water of the dock and slapped against the sleek motor-yachts and sedate wooden sailing boats tethered there. The air was cool, but after a week of rain it felt good to be outside.

  ‘Davo!’

  Only one person called me Davo. I turned to see him shouldering his way through the scrum, a lithe figure in black jacket, T-shirt and jeans. ‘Davo, how are you?’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Large, Davo, large.’ The blue eyes twinkled. He glanced inside the crowded pub. ‘Jesus, doesn’t anybody work any more?’

  ‘I thought seven o’clock was a bit late for you?’

  ‘Not these days.’

  ‘Here, let me get you a beer.’

  I fought my way back through the mob and returned with the brand of Czech beer that I knew Guy used to like. I noticed that he had moved a few feet away from the clump of drinkers outside the pub.

  ‘Don’t want to be overheard, eh?’

  ‘Since you ask, no,’ he said, taking a swig of his beer. ‘So, you’re a true City boy, now? Leipziger Gurney Kroheim. That’s as fancy as they come, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not since the merger,’ I said. ‘A lot of the top people left Gurney Kroheim, and Leipziger is one of the more staid German banks.’

  ‘But it’s still a merchant bank, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re all called investment bankers now.’

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  I paused before answering the question. I had been proud to join the ancient and still-powerful institution of Gurney Kroheim four years before. But after it had been swallowed up by Leipziger Bank, one of the largest banks in Germany, it underwent reorganizations every six months or so. And somehow Project Finance, where I had ended up, had turned out to be a bit of a backwater. I usually put an optimistic face on things to people outside the bank. But not to Guy.

  ‘Not really. I seem to do a lot of work and get little credit for it. The story of my life.’

  ‘But they pay you well?’

  ‘I suppose. Most of your pay these days comes from bonuses, and I don’t get much of those. Not yet, anyway.’

  Guy smiled sympathetically. ‘Give it a couple of years.’

  ‘Possibly. I’m not convinced. Leipziger is pretty bad at the moment. How about you? How’s the acting? I’ve been looking out for you on the box but I haven’t seen anything yet.’

  ‘Then you obviously don’t watch every episode of The Bill.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you as a cop,’ I said, surprised.

  ‘I wasn’t even a villain. More a passer-by. But then I got the call from LA.’

  I realized now that the trace of American in his accent was stronger than I remembered it.

  ‘Hollywood, eh? I bet Brad Pitt was shaking in his shoes.’

  ‘He coped. There’s room in that town for Brad and me. Plenty of room. They wanted me for a movie: Fool’s Paradise. Have you seen it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It got pretty bad reviews. Anyway, they wanted an English actor to speak three lines and snog Sandra Bullock. I was their man.’

  ‘You snogged Sandra Bullock?’

  ‘I did. It turned out it was the pinnacle of my career.’

  I had to ask: I couldn’t help myself. ‘What was it like?’

  Guy smiled. ‘What can I say? It was a passionate scene. She’s a great actress. The bad news was I got killed two minutes later.’

  Sandra Bullock. I was impressed.

  ‘I stayed in LA for a couple of years after that, hoping for a big break, but nothing happened. So I came back to London to try my luck.’

  ‘Have you had any?’

  ‘Not much.’

  I wasn’t completely surprised. Guy had the looks of a certain type of actor and I suspected that his charisma would translate well on to the screen. But I remembered the last time I had seen him, seven years ago, when he had just got out of drama school. His attitude then could hardly have been called professional.

  ‘Still flying?’ I asked.

  ‘Sadly, no. Can’t afford it these days. Dad isn’t quite as understanding as he used to be. You?’

  ‘Yeah, every now and then when the weather’s OK. Still from Elstree.’ It was Guy who had inspired me to take up flying. An expensive hobby, but one I enjoyed. ‘How is your father? Do you see much of him these days?’

 
‘Not much. You could say we’ve grown apart. Far apart.’

  ‘Too bad,’ I said. I didn’t mean it. After what had happened in France, it wouldn’t bother me if I never saw Tony Jourdan again.

  I sipped my beer and waited.

  ‘You and I haven’t seen each other since, well, since Mull, have we?’ Guy began hesitantly. ‘What, six years ago?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘And it was seven.’

  Guy touched his nose unconsciously. I noticed a small bump, the only blemish in the symmetry of his face. A reminder of that day every time he looked in the mirror.

  ‘I’d just like to say …’ he paused and looked straight into my eyes. ‘Well, I’m sorry. About what happened.’

  ‘So am I,’ I said. ‘It’s a long time ago now.’

  Guy smiled with relief. ‘A long time. Yeah, a long time.’

  Guy hadn’t changed. I knew I was being warmed up. ‘You want something from me, don’t you?’

  ‘You cynic,’ Guy said. Then he smiled sheepishly. ‘But you’re right, I do. I expect you’re wondering why I rang you out of nowhere like that?’

  ‘I was, actually.’

  ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

  I leaned back. ‘I see. Talk.’

  ‘I want to start an internet company.’

  ‘You and a thousand other people.’

  ‘It’s where the money is.’

  ‘Funny money. It’s not real money. No one’s made any real money out of the Internet yet.’

  ‘I will,’ said Guy, a quiet smile on his face.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I smiled myself, at the idea of Guy as a thrusting entrepreneur.

  ‘Yes. You can too, if you like.’

  ‘Me?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘Guy, I might work for a merchant bank, but I don’t have much money. And what I do have, I’m not going to throw into cyberspace.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean I’d like you to join me.’

  ‘Join you?’ I laughed. But I saw he was serious. ‘Guy, starting a business, even an internet business, is a big deal. You need financing, you need to employ people, you have to work. You have to get up before noon.’